Surgical procedures for harvesting portions of tendons or grafts for use in the reconstruction of joints are well known. Since tendons are a fibrous tissue, tendon grafts are obtained by stripping a length of tendon tissue longitudinally from a donor tendon. Harvesting a tendon graft or tenectomy may involve making an incision to expose the entire length of donor tendon from which the tendon graft will be taken. The donor tendon is longitudinally slit or stripped by a bladed instrument or a tendon stripper. The ends of the tendon graft are severed and the graft removed. Alternatively, a small incision is made to expose the donor tendon at one end of the intended graft and another incision is made to expose the donor tendon at the opposite end of the graft. The tendon is then slit by a stripper which is passed under the skin along the donor tendon. The ends of the tendon graft are severed through the two small incisions. While making two smaller incisions may lessen the tissue trauma and scarring, locating the donor tendon through the second incision is often difficult. In addition, the surgeon must determine which portion of the tendon tissue is the graft before severing the ends.
It is also known to strip a tendon and then sever just one end of the tendon while the other end remains naturally attached. The severed end is then repositioned and reattached at the desired new location. Such a procedure for the knee is disclosed by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,901,717 and 4,773,417 to Moore et al. In addition, an instrument is available called the Concept Tendon Harvester which is sold by Linvatec, Corp. The Concept Tendon Harvestor utilizes two elongated concentric tubular members. The inner member can be rotated within the outer member to provide three positions: an open position enabling the tendon to be inserted into an opening in the distal end of the instrument; a locked position which holds the tendon during the stripping process; and a cutting position in which a cutting edge on the inner tubular member is rotated to cut the tendon at the remote end of the tendon. The graft can then be harvested with or without cutting the other end of the tendon at the incision site, at the surgeon's discretion.